The Joy of Books: Confessions of a Lifelong Reader Book

Part memoir, part history, former newsman Eric Burns discusses books, their history, and important place in our world. Burns is clearly a reader and wishes to share that love of immersing oneself in books with other kindred spirits. However, his attempts to advocate for more books, more reading,and less technology and distractions frequently cross over into long-winded rants. Burns takes stabs at computers, video games, the education system, etc. that take people away from reading, without ever proposing a solution to reverse this. Technology isn't going away. Perhaps balance would be a better sermon than eradication.

On the one hand Burns is strongly advocating for people everywhere to read more. At the same time, he is also very disparaging of current authors who are not appropriately literary, in his view. If you're going to strongly encourage more reading, it seems unbalanced to criticize authors of popular fiction who produce books people want to read.

One part I thought very interesting: the book was written in 1995. Burns had seen a CD-Rom of The Grapes of Wrath and was appalled at the interactive features. I wonder what he thinks of e-books today?

At the end of the book Burns lists 571 books he thinks are very important to read. This is certainly his opinion and he's entitled to it, but it was a rather overwhelming list of white men authors. This didn't lower my review of the book (the ranting did that) but it seemed to fit with the narrow-mindedness I found regarding his attitudes toward the right way to read and the right books to read.